Is God For Me? Relationship vs Religion w/ Erwin McManus

no one can drag you to god kicking and screaming and i think that's been the mistake of not just religion but even christianity of trying to um force people into a relationship with god that's that's torment the idea that you don't want to know god or don't want to be in god's presence is i think a misunderstanding of god i said the first thing is just to be open to the possibility that god is for you and that the god is not warring against you that god is actually fighting for you and that if you've run away from religion you haven't run away from god you're actually running to god if you run away from hypocrisy and the falsehood of religion you haven't run away from god you're actually running to god because god isn't there god is in the other end of that [Music] welcome back to max out everybody i i got to be honest with you i have wanted to have this conversation for a very long time and i've wanted all of you to get a chance to listen to it because the man to my left is my favorite pastor in the world but he's also one of my favorite men and he's growing to become a really dear dear friend of mine and it's because he's so darn interesting this is one of the most interesting people you're ever going to listen to if you're a person of faith you're going to love today and if you're not you're going to enjoy this journey like you can't believe this man's an author he's pastor of mosaic church by the way he's an entrepreneur he's a fashion designer uh he's a writer he's he's a he's musically inclined he's a true renaissance man i won't call him the dos equis man because he's a christian man but he is to me one of the most interesting men in the world so erwin mcmanus welcome to max out oh man it's so good to be here with you pretty good intro off the comic live up to the intro but live up to it everybody trust me so i want to talk about faith right out of the gate all right i want to get right into it so one of the things i admire about you is that you came to your faith as i understand it a little bit later than most people in your family you were sort of an atheist for a decent little part of your upbringing right well we grew up pretty much ill religious i'm an immigrant from el salvador and so we have a little bit of a roman catholic kind of like backdrop because everyone latin america kind of did and but we never went to mass and it wasn't a part of our life and uh but my um my brother was an atheist and i was more of a mystic what's a mystic i i didn't believe in a personal god but i believe that there's something spiritual or something transcendent there's something more than the material world gotcha i just didn't know what it was okay and then my mom uh brought a brought a buddha home when we were young and so we kind of became buddhists and then later she started studying judaism and and became more informed by judaism and uh by time i was in sixth grade i read every mythology book in the library so i i was always searching but i just didn't know what i was searching for but i think i knew why there was a a massive void and emptiness inside of me a disconnection from people in the world around me and i was trying to find some kind of answer to the existence of me i think everybody is yeah i agree and i think that there's a ongoing conversation in our souls in our hearts that are constantly trying to understand ourselves and what this life means where are we going when our physical body doesn't work anymore and um and i think that knowing you have this unbelievable analogy that you use about phantom pain oh yeah that i think the entire world is about to benefit from if you've ever wondered do you wonder if you're listening i think this is a perfect example as to the fact that you are so explain that sure well i was a straight d student for through 12th grade straight d d okay that's impressive i mean i might have flunked out a few classes too but i averaged around a d and barely graduated from high school they just they graduated me just not to have me back i didn't go to college right away just floated around working odd jobs where construction worked as a lumberjack worked as a carpenter you know just did all kinds of things and and i begged my way into college realizing my life had no direction and found a school that would take me on condition and then i stepped into a philosophy class and next thing i knew i became a philosopher and then suddenly started making straight a's and suddenly discovered a part of myself that had been asleep and i became what i would call a socratic i really was influenced by the stoics and the teachings of socrates and plato and aristotle and this kind of began for me a real conscious search for meaning in life and one of things i talk about with phantom pain is that one of the dynamics of phantom pain is that when a soldier loses an arm or a leg they for years if not for the rest of their life they have experiences where they think that arm is still there or that leg is still there they actually feel pain in that leg even though it's not there yeah and one of the elements that has to exist for pan for phantom pain is that you had to have lost something that once was yours and what i've come to believe is that ideals human ideals are the phantom pain of the soul just the ideas let's say of world peace when people say they want world peace where do we get the concept of world peace because we've never done a world with peace when we think about things like justice for all where do we get this concept that everyone would have justice we've never known the world except the world of injustice when we think of ending poverty or ending disease or ending homelessness where do we get these concepts these ideals have never been experienced in human history right and so i'm convinced that these human ideals are the phantom pain of the soul they're they're our souls remembering what humans are supposed to be like and that and it's our longing to reclaim who we are even like certain words like um where you say something's unnatural for a human or something's inhumane how can something be inhumane if a human being did it i mean when we see a killer whale uh eating a seal i i've watched somewhere they take the seal and throw it in the air while it's still alive and then it comes down and starts swimming away and they come up to it and throw it in the air and they're so delicate with the seal they don't kill it until the seal is so tired it can't swim away and then they eat it so they're playing this game with the seal but the seal doesn't like the game and but we never say that that that killer whale's inhuman we just say it's just natural for the seal when a tiger chases down a gazelle and and consumes it while it's fighting for its life we never say that's an animal but when a human being does something when someone walks in and kills students at a elementary school or someone randomly shoots eight or ten people in a grocery store we know that's inhuman it's inhumane the reason we have this sense of knowledge is that we somehow know that the way human beings are living their lives is beneath being human we're the only species that doesn't know how to be the species that's called therapy i mean you know gazelles are not in therapy beavers are not in therapy kangaroos are not in therapy they just know how to be the species human beings have the highest intention and we're the only species that can live outside of our intention and i think that's like the core of depression you cannot be depressed if you cannot imagine a different self a different you a different life a different world depression is that your reality doesn't match to the ideals that are haunting you and so i think actually even like depression and sense of despair and this anxiety and stress that all of us struggle with those are actually beautiful reminders that we're meant for more oh my gosh erwin as you say that what i think is by the way everybody now you know i wanted everyone he's easier for me today just so that you all know but i wanted to share him with you because and you won't take you're so humble but irwin's a brilliant man and he's a special man and he's got this incredible anointing uh to communicate thoughts and by the way and possess thoughts that not everybody's capable of possessing as you've just seen and that's important to me because i think there's a segment of the world that hasn't yet accepted a faith or a god because somehow they think that that's less intellectual that somehow that if i have these thoughts that uh you know that i don't believe in science which you and i both sort of came to our faith almost the reverse that way which i'd like you to talk about in a minute but this idea of depression that you said as you were talking i thought that is so true that we have this ideal or this comparison of what could be and that's what depresses one because i think a depressed person compared to potentially a non-depressed person isn't experiencing more negative things in their life necessarily are more turmoil or more anxiety that's right it's it's perhaps maybe the lack of believing in some other space so i for you when you found faith was it you were sort of pursuing it almost scientifically you wanted to prove it to some extent did you not well i was i was pursuing it at least philosophically i was trying to find answers that made sense in a holistic way and what became really discouraging to me is as i read philosophy after philosophers or philosopher was i i realized that they were in the same place i was they were trying to make sense of life and so eventually i think my greatest comfort wasn't in the answers it was in the questions the fact that there might be a thousand different answers you know you're you're a christian other person the buddhist or the person is a muslim though it's an atheist otherwise an agnostic and if you're anything like me you've been several of those along the way trying to find meaning in life but the questions were always the same and i realized seven billion people are all asking the question why and no one teaches them that question i mean i have two kids and the first question they began to ask as children was why they didn't ask what where when who those are more important questions those are functional questions for survival why is not a survival question why is an intrinsic question of the image of god in a person's soul we need the why not just the who one what where when and how and and so for me i was driven by the why trying to find out what is the reason for life and i started looking at religions and i was pretty much open to everything okay i i didn't have anything that i had written off except maybe christianity i have to admit i is that right yeah i did and i'm not sure why but i was in a philosophy class and a professor read a passage in the old testament where it seems like god tells his people to go kill people for no reason and then the professor read that passage and said and this is supposed to be the god of love and we all laughed i laughed too and so in like 30 seconds i discounted christianity and uh but in the middle of all my pursuit i i started hearing about jesus and um and i wasn't resistant but i wasn't open okay you know i was i became resistant as i got closer to a point of intersection because i heard this thing about jesus saying he was the truth i thought wait a minute wait a minute when you give your life to jesus you're not allowed to pursue truth anymore and so for me it was a misunderstanding from the other side and because i didn't want to become a dogmatic close-minded condemning human being i love pursuing truth i love the search for the uncertain and the mysterious and and so this idea that there was quote a truth and once you have it you're right for the rest of your life wasn't appealing to me at all it was when i finally understood what jesus was saying no no no when he says i'm the truth he's talking about he's the trustworthy one and that all truth exists because something can be trusted and if there isn't a god who can be trusted then there really isn't this thing that we would call truth and and so i realized the fundamental question for me is do i believe god can be trusted and and so i looked at all these religions and i realized oh they all have something in common they all give us a system of how we can get to god of how we can attain god's love or his acceptance or his forgiveness or get that ultimate state of consciousness whatever it may be but jesus was the only one that had a different narrative everything else said this is what you need to do to get to god with jesus it was this is what god did to get to you and so i went okay you know i have a process of elimination where any god that demands of me things i'm incapable of to earn his love is not worthy of my worship or my belief but if when i love someone when my kids were little my love for them wasn't contingent on what they did for me i was the one who loved my children unconditionally in fact when my son was like three years old at the dinner table one night i hope it's okay if i say this you know but he he said to his mom you know i don't love you and his mom started crying at the dinner table and and he of course he loved his mom he just learned that that phrase had power and so we got into bed that night and and he said uh i said aaron i love you and he said well i don't love you and i said well you know i said that's okay he said because i have enough love for both of us and then he paused and goes well dad how do i know if i love you like he's a very philosophical where do you get the whole person he goes how do i know if i love someone and uh and i tell him i said you know right now in your life buddy what's more important is that you know you're fully loved and uh and as you know that you're fully loved you're gonna understand love more and more and one of the things that i realized about god was like if my relationship with god was dependent on how much i love god i'm in trouble but my relationship with god is actually dependent how much god loves me and jesus is the singular narrative of the divine that says no god did what was necessary to get to you that through god stepping into human history taking on flesh and blood dying on the cross being risen from the dead that that wasn't god waiting on us to get to him that was god getting to us at any cost and by the way if you think the central principle the universe is love then of course the ultimate act of love is going to be sacrifice so it makes perfect sense to me because god is love that the ultimate expression of god's love was the sacrifice of jesus on the cross so i'm 50 years old and i feel like i'm a pretty faithful guy i've been a christian a long time i've never heard it said that way in my life that it's a huge impact it's not how i can get to god it's what god did to get to me that is uh profound and uh makes me very makes me very emotional but i think that's why we actually know love more profoundly not when someone loves us but when we love that person and we all we all desperately long to be loved because it validates our worth but when we love someone unconditionally it actually makes us more like god it's so beautiful and by the way any of you that are you're driving in your car right now and you're starting to think thoughts you never thought before you're thinking them you know very simple thing i tell people all the time for me too is like i i don't think you can love someone more than i love my two children and to think that the lord loves me even more than that even with less conditions than that is such a beautiful thing to just know in our lives and one of the things about reading scripture that i'm not great at retaining scripture and i know that i know that that's probably not something that's positive to admit but i know but i do know how scripture makes me feel and i know the peace that i get when i read it and um i heard you say something so interesting about reading god's word that maybe you're we read god's word because we want to understand more about god but you really believe that you started to study the word of god to learn more about you is that how is that correctly said uh very very much so like i see myself far more as an anthropologist and a theologian and a part of that for me is i i don't know how to study god you know people say i'm a theologian that means the study of god i don't think god's supposed to be studied i think god's supposed to be known and i don't study my wife i love my wife i come to know my wife i don't have a knowledge of my wife i have a knowing of my wife which is very very different and and i think unfortunately sometimes we confuse those and i i'm not interested in uh gaining more and more information about god i'm interested in finding intimacy with god so i began setting the bible not to really learn as much about god as much as i wanted to learn about us as humans and it was a part of the way i've validated the bible because i thought why do i believe this book i didn't grow up with this book why do i believe war and peace why you know why you know why why isn't catcher in the rye my fundamental foundational book and and so i didn't grow up with this advantage i guess that christians have of believing the bible without questioning i question everything and so i thought okay first of all if what the bible says about humanity is accurate then i can have greater trust in what it says about god and and if we're created in the image of god two things can happen as i understand who god is i can understand who we are better but also as i understand who we are and i can understand who god is better and so i became an anthropologist and it just gave me so much insight into humanity and what are the core intrinsic motives that uh that drive us all and and i think this is why it's so important like when i speak in in the secular world i mean you you posture me today it's just talking as a pastor right and i actually love being in environments where i get to talk not as a pastor because then people think oh all he can do is talk about god i said no see when you connect to god a deep level you can talk about leadership you can talk about relationships you can talk about emotional mental health you can talk about every arena because you begin understanding humans better and and a huge drive for me was hey if god's out there he's fine i'm the one who's really needing help and so at mosaic we did a survey one sunday and i just asked everyone how many of you are atheists we had over a thousand people at mosaic on the property on the program who said they were atheists and uh and that's just how many people acknowledge they're atheists not even other people who didn't that day and i've talked to so many of my friends who are atheists and i said why do you come to mosaic they said because your your perspective on life and on us makes more sense to us than ours and and frankly my journey to help people to faith isn't to try to argue with someone about god i'd rather take the time to talk about who you are and help you unders understand what it means to be human and as that understanding grows and deepens i know it's going to naturally do to god like this event that i just spoke at that you were asking me about this 100 million mastermind i told him i said look everyone in this room is on a search to understand themselves but how can you know who you are when you don't know what you are and because if if you don't even know what it means to be human you never understand what it means to be you and so i spent my whole session with him just talking about what it means to be a human being and how we've lost our our sense of humanity and if in our search to reclaim our humanity is actually our search to reclaim the image of god in us i totally believe that and and speaking by the way of business because this man is an entrepreneur and uh the only thing that fascinated me i i sometimes think maybe if people don't know me very well or maybe they do know me they'll think you know a really confident guy or whatever right which i'm a pretty i'm pretty good at expressing that without it always necessarily being the truth but where my confidence does come from is a belief that i do have a god that loves me and he'd like me to not he'd like to protect me and i think he'd like goodwill and good favor in my life and that is a sense of deep confidence for me and as a businessman it's been critical to my success before any business meeting i've gone into to just get the comfort of saying a prayer to ask the lord you know let the holy spirit give me the right words i give me the give me the the peace that i need to deliver here today knowing that when i leave if i do or don't get that deal god still loves me and those things have mattered to me and one of the things that surprised me because that part of my faith came very natural to me not all of the stuff did but to me if god loves me if there's a god he's with me all the time he's with me when i get in my car he's with us in this conversation he's with me when i'm trying to close a deal right and it's always surprised me irwin when i meet people who on sundays have great faith in church they're in worship they're all excited they'll go to a bible study they go to a men's group but then when they walk into a board room or they walk in to cut a deal now they're alone again and i've always thought why is it and all of you listen you want to know what you know all the keys i give you a mindset and visualization and all that stuff i'm gonna give you my big one when i walk in to do a business deal i'm not walking away from god when i do it that's right and do you do you speak to that for a minute because i think even perhaps you've seen this in your life with business people you've interacted with it's like hey listen this god thing he's with you all the time it's not just when you're praying on sunday in church that's so so good uh you're just the word confidence it's just a construct of two words it means with faith and so confidence means with faith and what i think sometimes people forget is that every human being lives with some dynamic of faith that that fear is the negative side of faith and so fear is projecting into the future a worst-case scenario and faith is projecting the future of best case scenario and it's just like with hope you're talking about earlier about depression so let's work our way up to confidence into the business environment uh we get depressed because we lose hope now one of the interesting things about hope because i i love like studying how things exist in the in our internal universe hope cannot exist in the past when your hope is in the past it's called regret hope can't actually even exist in the present and that's that's actually accomplishment so for something to actually give you hope it has to exist in the future in fact um paul writes that when something is a source of hope once you attained it it's no longer a source of hope that's why people who are single think oh when i get married i won't be lonely when i get married i'll finally be happy when i get married it's all going to come together then you get married well the idea of marriage was a source of hope but once you're married it's no longer yeah and so your hope always has to be in the future so what that tells me is that humans are designed to be connected to the future which makes us different than every other species that exists and so then when our future seems inaccessible when we no longer we can create this better idea of who we can be or a better idea of our life or better the area of our world we move to despair the reason you have confidence is that you've even maybe even unconsciously accepted your role as a creator now when i first talked about humans being creators christians got really nervous right you know only god's a creator he said no no god is the one who is the instigator of all creation but he made you in his image he made you a creator the way i can know this is that you've been given an imagination you've been imagined to imagine and you're created to create you're both a work of art and an artist to work and once as a human being you realize oh wait a minute a part of being human ants create colonies bees create hives humans create futures and one of the unique design mechanisms of humans is that we create futures without even knowing it like silkworms will wake up in the morning and go am i going to make a cotton poly blend or am i going to make silk you know and i mean sheep they only make wool they just they they never make linen and humans can't create paths all humans can do is create futures but a lot of people live with a victimized mentality and say that their life is happening to them that their circumstances are more powerful than their inner world and one of the differences about with you ed is that you understand that your choices create i i used to have it on our wall in our house the most spiritual activity you will ever engage in is to choose i would ask people what's the most spiritual thing the most spiritual activity you can do is to choose yeah because what's the most spiritual thing you can think of oh to pray or to read the bible or to meditate or to go to church go to mass or or to meditate and i go all of those have a precursor you don't pray till you choose to pray you don't meditate you choose to meditate you don't go to church you choose to go to church you don't you don't give generously until you choose to give generously every spiritual activity has this one thing in common you have to choose it what makes humans different than every other species is the power to choose and in those choices to create our superpower is that we can materialize the invisible so i i heard years ago you ever hear things that you think is in the bible and you realize it's not in the bible yes you know so one of those is that god created everything out of nothing i thought okay that's what makes god different right he created everything out of nothing but that's actually not what the bible says it says the bible actually says that god created everything that is seen out of that which is unseen now go to man wait a minute something that's unseen is different than something that doesn't exist because oxygen the atmosphere is unseen but it exists and if it didn't exist we would suffocate so the the existence of our lives is the proof of this unseen element and so our scientists explored for this invisible reality called oxygen because of the effect it has on our because we can inhale and exhale and so it is the effect that made a search for the cause and so then when the bible says that all that is seen came out of the unseen i'm going wait a minute what am i if god created out of the unseen what was the unseen it was the imagination of god so god created out of his imagination out of his dreams he imagined the universe and then spoke into existence he imagined this planet with this perfect environment for life and then spoke into existence and going wow this is one of the things that translates to us yes we actually imagine and create we're the only species on this planet that can imagine something that does not exist and then create it yes and that's what makes us unique as a species now when a human being is not living up to their intention they're not creating oh gosh that's good and and so then we're now the victim of what others are creating so this is the powerful thing about ed all right okay you may not people may not realize this but we're living inside of someone's imagination now you probably didn't design this house and it's beautiful by the way thank you but when you saw it you thought oh i love this house and you might even thought this is the house i imagined yes but it's a house someone else imagined yeah every time you walk in this door yes you're walking to someone else's imagination so true when we live in this amazing country with all of its problems and all of its shortcomings we're living in the imagination of jefferson and washington we're living in the imagination of lincoln the fact even while we're working through racial equality and dealing with issues of social injustice we are still living inside of the imagination of lincoln ending slavery we're living inside the imagination of martin luther king jr when he said i have a dream i dream of a day where a man will be judged by the content of his character not the color of his skin when barack obama took the oath of office and became the president united states he was literally walking inside of the imagination of mlk junior we are all living inside of someone's imagination but the question then is are we creating a better future for those that walk in our imagination because adolf hitler had an imagination it became a nightmare to the world there are others who imagine a world that is a nightmare for everyone else and this is what drove me question crazy about christianity when i first became a fall of jesus christians were so passive they kept saying things like oh if god wants it to happen it's going to happen we're going where did you find that in the bible like you know oh you know it wasn't it just wasn't god's school i'd go to events where no one showed up and people said well everyone god wanted was here so i don't think so i think you're a terrible marketer and you did a terrible job planning this event i think god's really embarrassed that you put his name on it and and i began realizing that christians have this passive view of the future oh no god's the only one to create the future they want no see evil men do not wait on god to give them permission to create the future they imagine but for far too long good people have been passively waiting for god to create the future you know how god creates the future through you he gets the future through me creates the future through us and one of the things that really attracts me and draws me to you is that you are creating a future for other people that they cannot yet imagine you've you've compelled other people to believe they can be successful that they can own a home that they can have a career that they can own their own business that they can create a better world not just for themselves but for others and every time we translate the power of that imagination into the creative force of creating a future we've made the world a better place okay i i have to just i have to tell you i've been doing the show for a long time i i no disrespect to any other guest that's probably my favorite 10 minutes if we could go back and do that again i'm going to tell you why for a few minutes first off you're amazing but i have a word of the year every year i pray for a word of the year my word this year has been imagination oh wow and so um i i'm such a huge believer in what you've just described and by the way thank you for those kind words i feel the same way about you you also give people the strength and the courage and the faith to chase that i think one of my most of my friends my dearest friends you know some are financially successful some aren't some are they they're successful in the sense that i love people that are curious i love people that have imaginations i also respect people who have the faith and the courage to strength to step into their imagination and do something about it and that's what you're just really describing right now i your dreams everybody your visions that you have these are not hallucinations these are not jokes god's playing on you these are glimpses into what's possible in your life if you'll step into it boldly if you'll be resilient if you'll be tough if you'll find the resources if you'll pray about it if you'll speak about it and put it out into the world there's blessings coming your way maybe not necessarily to your point it wasn't god's will or it may not be your time right every single time but there's a blessing and i have to tell you it's so do you think that that's why because a lot of you may not know this about irwin but first off he's written so many amazing books there's another one that's going to be coming out this fall what's the one this fall calls it's called the genius of jesus the genius what's the premise of that book i mean i understand that geniuses of jesus but i imagine it's brought something to do with human beings too i spent 40 years studying genius and 40 years following jesus and i realized there was a an intersection that was unexpected for me because every list in the world i ever found about geniuses never had jesus on the list he's not on a single list i've ever found in the world and i thought it's so odd that muhammad's on list gandhi's on this buddha is on list mandela is on this but jesus never made a list so i i started wondering if i remove all the divinity from jesus as he qualifies as jesus as a genius and and ironically the original concept of genius which came from the greeks is is genie that you're touched by the divine so the original definition of a genius is a touch of the divine it's mozart's beethoven it's picasso it's hawking's it's like it's michael jordan right you know it's a touch of divine and and i started wondering if geniuses in a sense a small window into the extraordinary nature of god and the potential of humans yes then the genius of jesus would be in in his living out what it means to be human and and i wanted to search for genius that was transferable because if i spend my life in mozart i'm not going to come out a musician yeah if i saw my life for picasso i'm not going to be a painter but here's an interesting thing uh a study was done in the 60s using technology methodology used with nasa and they were identifying creativity high level creativity genius the study found that when they translated the children that 98 of children at the age of five came out as geniuses they tracked those children for the next decade by around the age of 12 only 30 of them were still geniuses by the age of 20 only 2 percent were still geniuses and so what you find is that human creativity human genius is intrinsic to being human it's natural to who we are genius has to be destroyed it doesn't have to in a sense to be developed it's it's natural to us and creativity every human being is creative but we die so uncreative every human being is extraordinary but we die ordinary and so in the genius of jesus what i try to extricate is the genius that jesus actually emulates that he expresses that he reveals to us that is available to every single human being and because i i want a world where everyone is living out their creativity where everyone is is seeing their imagination translated into reality as the as the most beautiful future i want a world where everyone's genius is awakened and i believe in that uh you may not know this about me but um by the time i was 12 years old i was in a psychiatric chair and i spent time in and time in and out of a hospital and i was told i was i was um i i i if you looked at me at the time of my life i was so broken and so fragmented you would think i would never uh accomplish anything in my life and i believed that about myself i believed that i had no talent no ability no intelligence took 12 years to get the genius out of you in your own belief system yeah and what it was is that i was fighting try to hold on to my uniqueness and uh and uh and it was driving me insane i i was going to a point of madness even the point where i i ran away from home quite a few times but i actually go went out to a field and i convinced myself i was from another planet and i started screaming in the middle of night uh that i believe that was like the social experiment to see if our species could could uh uh to could live with humans yeah and and so i was begging them to take me back that i said it doesn't work it doesn't work and i now i know that was just my desperate sense of aloneness and that i think all of us struggle with no matter how successful we are no matter how much you know we have in the world how much other people emulate our lives we struggle with the sense of connection and and and i think some of it though is it's not just a disconnection from each other it's it's a disconnection from our core selves and and i look back now and i laugh because they say in neuroscience that the first 12 years you teach your brain what to uh focus on so if you focus on math you become a mathematician if you focus on literature you you know you become a pro whatever english professor well i realized the first 12 years of my life i was so messed up i hid in my imagination and what ended up happening was i realized i'm either going to use my imagination to escape the world or i'm going to use my imagination to create a new world and so now that i'm almost 63 i realized oh i just gone back to my initial space as a child i never gave up on my imagination and i understand the power of the imagination to create and that's what i want to help everyone else rediscover do you believe i believe that everyone is born with that form of genius there's a unique giftedness that's wired into us two or three unique things could be your humor your beauty your intellect your daughter's this amazing singer you're you're obviously an incredibly creative person i'm a client of yours and your clothing brand i wear your stuff all the time on my instagram every time i get a compliment so i'm pretty much wearing your clothes right you're wearing them today um the way that you write and express yourself i i but but people think well maybe my gift isn't there's these apparent gifts as you said earlier michael jordan six foot six can windmill dunk and shoot and but there's these gifts that we don't give ourselves credit for it could be your discernment your kindness your your uh your sensory acuity your humor your touch you know there's you're born with them and i just think i feel like that imagining what those gifts are and how to use them in the service of other people is the most blissful people that i know and and they're across the board they're school teachers and they're ceos that are multi-millionaires and both of them what they have in common if they're happy if they're successful a in my opinion they know jesus and b they know who they are with their gifts and their imagining i love your word different ways to use them to serve other people you seem to do that all the time if it's your clothes it's your it's your uh you know the writings are just unbelievable do you do you ever feel like people feel hey you're a pastor you should stay in this box over here you're doing that telling me stay in my box all my life have they seriously you know as a designer i want to add to that as a designer what i've come to believe is the most beautiful color is love and you know if a person is where do i start just start loving the people in your life because when you start living a life of love the whole makeup of your life changes you know because if all of us are here to create a work of art and a part of what always haunted me was would i ever create that one work of art that i was born to create and and one things i think that i've come to grips with in my life is the most important work of art in your life is your life and that's really your great masterpiece you know and but you know when when i when i write when i design when i create i'm actually trying to bring something to the world i'm trying to give people the material from which they can create a more beautiful life for themselves and there's part of the reason why i i do design clothes oh i got so much hate and i got hate because uh my stuff is actually expensive yes it is you know but but i feel like jesus turned water into wine and it was the best wine in the world he didn't create some you know shangri-la you know midnight special thing you buy over it you know at 7-eleven or something like that he created the best wine in the world and so when i designed clothes ago i want i want aspire to create the best clothes in the world and you know i i want i want to always measure myself against the best of the best whether it's louis vuitton or michael jordan or whoever it is and i i want i may never be the best but i'm not going to allow myself to feel like i'm great just because i'm measuring myself against the worst well about that i want to ask you about that one of the things i've seen you get passionate about that i'm kind of crazy about too is this settling thing in life like it's hard for me this topic because you know there's a part of me that you know people will say when's enough enough for me at no point in my life was there a real desire to get rich i'd like and by the way i don't think there's anything wrong if that's a desire it just it wasn't mine mine was i'm left-handed i think i'm right i'm very creative so for me similarly to you i just learned to monetize it better than you did as we joked about but i'm a creative person i like expressing myself creating businesses creating products creating thoughts and concepts marvin i was like really intentional about getting wealthy right but i don't want to ever settle for the lack of expression of whatever those gifts are i feel like these gifts are muscles that we can build as well and i see so many people in life for whatever excuse they come up with they just settle they just go this isn't yeah okay and there's this point where that genius does begin to die even if they kindled it later they're yeah they're in their 20s they were successful and then you know they just kind of called it quits at 30 years old or 40 years old or 60 years old how do you feel about that is there some obligation we have if it's the right term to not settle in our lives absolutely and one of the one things i would say is that it's not just that you learned how to monetize better you actually understood your value better you understood that your contribution actually mattered and if something matters in the world it needs to be resourced because if it isn't resourced then it doesn't replicate and one of the things that sometimes we forget is that uh money um is the best evidence of our value it shows us what we care about in life you know i've spent my life in like this overwhelming haunting that i would settle for too little that i would never live my life with the full intention that god created me to live and and some of it is you know my own personal dysfunction you know being told that i've never accomplished anything uh being explained by a parent that hey we always told you you were nothing hoping that you would rebel so that you would prove us wrong not a great strategy it's a terrible parenting strategy but that was the strategy they had and and i took my son when um he was 15 to meet my stepdad because he wanted to meet my stepdad bill mcmanison and in that one meeting where my son met my my stepdad he said to my son i don't know what your dad's told you but he was just average oh my gosh he said you know his brother was exceptional he was a great athlete he really had talent but your dad was just average and i remember saying you know to my dad saying hey dad what else would i say of course i was just average and as i left i had this like haunting pain of why was this the one thing my dad wanted to say to my son about you know his dad but then i but i was haunted by something worse i was never average i was always below average average would have been a compliment i was afraid to put myself out there because i was afraid that i would prove that i wasn't anything and i think a lot of us settle not because we don't have aspirations but because we're terrified that if we try it will prove everyone else right that we're less than we hoped and and so i've lived my life as a metaphor people told me i mean i'm super shy super introverted super inclusive and so um i told myself i'm gonna put myself out there i'm to learn how to become a communicator i'm going to learn how to be a leader when someone told me i couldn't do something i just went out and did it you know when you know until people tell me you're a pastor you can't do this i just go break the stereotypes and do it i became a designer years and years ago because i felt like creatives were not given value in the church that creativity was seen as almost against god and i became an entrepreneur because i felt like especially latins were so passive they kept waiting for someone else to change their fortune i said no as a latino you have to go create a new world you have to uh believe in your dreams you you can actually aspire and i feel like crazy because i want people to realize failure doesn't kill you it doesn't end your life and and and so yes i want things i cannot stand is when a person chooses apathy because apathy literally means the absence of passion and you cannot live the life god created you live without passion by the way this is why i'm not a buddhist a lot of americans love buddhism because they don't understand buddhism buddhism's ultimate end is the end of desire it's the elimination of passion is the elimination of self christianity is different see buddhism says the great evil is your desire what the bible actually says no god created you with desires and those desires will actually become your your compass to the life god created you to live the bible actually says love god and he will and he'll give you the desires of your heart god actually wants to fulfill those desires and so one of the things that really draws me to jesus is how passionate it was if you want to know what god is passionate about look at the cross in fact the last three days around the life of jesus are called the passion that's right because if you want to know what god's passion about look what he's willing to sacrifice for he was so passionate to end the deceptive power of death that he died on the cross for us he was so passionate to bring us to life that he died for us i'm going oh god is not a god who's apathetic he's not trying to move us to the end of desire god is trying to move us to the most passionate life possible that's freaking brilliant it's exciting to me that means i get up the morning i get to feel fully alive so do you think there's a correlation between one's passion level and their willingness to sacrifice then absolutely because you can only know what you're passionate about by what you're willing to sacrifice for and there's a lot of things i'm interested in but i'm not passionate about there's not a willing to sacrifice for them i was at a ted in rio de janeiro and came out of lobby there was this whole group talking and the founder of the center for global consciousness from hong kong was speaking and i somehow got pulled into this conversation and he said if we're going to achieve our ultimate humanity we need the elimination of all thought and i said when you say the elimination of all thought do you mean also the human imagination he goes absolutely we must come to the elimination of all thought but it's not just that and i said well what else and he said if we're going to become the ultimate expression of humanity we must also eliminate all feeling all emotion and i said when you say all the emotion do you also include love you said yes even the elimination of love and i looked at him and said no give me love and imagination and i can change the world absolutely absolutely and i think a lot of people are on the wrong spiritual pursuit because they don't understand that the central message of the scriptures of jesus is that give me love and imagination and you will change the world oh my gosh see this is one of these things you guys think irwin will probably have been on the show about 46 times i'm pretty sure because i knew this would be what we would do today like i haven't even gotten into his childhood you heard a little bit about his dad there there's all these things and um do you you know i just want to first i want to say one thing all of you should be following irwin you're going to want to get any of his books that are already out the one that's going to be coming out you're going to want to get but i got to tell you guys something i i started the show by saying that i really believe you're unique and special because of your entrepreneur background because of how creative you are you're you're not a you're a contrarian thinker who but a man who believes in a very deep faith that he's carried for a long time but you're still a contrarian thinker and i love that about you i i want to get two more questions in even though we're over on time do you okay you're good i uh i loved today for me i've got i get everybody gets to listen underwater i'm just really honored to be on the show oh brother you're gonna you i am so excited because there's shares going on all over the world right now there are people that are watching this and listening to especially the ones that are listening to it but you also you know this life is precious and you were sick you had cancer i did and that can make a different impact did when you first got it were you scared how did it impact you your faith overall uh it was in december uh three years ago that uh i was actually just uh trying to get a key man policy for my business and for um the church so that if i died i would leave them something okay and i went 10 years out we only get a key man policy i couldn't pass an insurance test and so i would i went to the middle east without any you know insurance like that and i joke about that um insurances don't give you life insurance they give you definition right you know and because i'm fully alive and and but so i was taking tasks just to get the insurance and i went to a doctor friend of mine said i can't pass these tests but they can't find anything wrong with me i said can you find me a doctor that could like you know like an athlete in college help me pass these tests and my doctor friend said that's illegal and i'll send you to an old school doctor and he'll help you and that old school doctor must have been like almost 80 years old figured out i had cancer and they took me in for testing and i had stage four cancer the day they found it and it was not just my prostate it was in my bladder it was in my lymph nodes and so it was you know pretty advanced and they put and then they sent it to a radiologist who was a i guess a specialist in bean radiology and he was out of town on vacation he flew in just to meet with me and he sat down and he goes i can't help you this cancer's too advanced the treatments won't help you it won't save your life he said but my daughter's lives have been changed by you and so i flew in from out of uh the state i was on vacation but when i saw it was your name i flew in just to meet with you and he pulled out three names and three faces he goes these these are the three best surgeons in the world and if you'll if you ask me i'll call them and so i said yeah i'll take this one this one just pick two right you know and uh he called them up and one of them is the the doctor who invented da vinci the the machine that goes in and performs the surgery and um and he fit me in three weeks later to have surgery it was supposed to be a two-hour surgery with six and a half hour surgery well when the doctor looked at me we went in just to get a clearance that i was okay my kids waiting for me at a restaurant and the doctor looks at me and says you have cancer and my wife started crying almost instantly and it was when i looked at her that i realized how heavy it was and then we went to the restaurant and i told my kids it was very unwise of me to do that we're in a restaurant i tell them i have cancer and it was just more than they could bury emotionally and i realized part of the reason i didn't perceive how they would react i wasn't afraid and yet i can tell you that i felt no fear zero now i gave myself permission to feel anything i wanted i hate when people feel like pastors was supposed to not be humans right so i told myself if i feel angry i'm going to be angry if i feel afraid and be afraid i'm just going to let whatever emotion i feel to be real and i never felt fear fear no fear because you were okay if you passed on because you knew you were going or no fear because you didn't think this was the end no no fear because i had no regrets uh i wanted to stay i love this life are you kidding i love the sound of the ocean i love looking at the beach i love my kids i want to see my my daughter have her grandchild there's so many things i love about life but i didn't have this i think most of us are actually not afraid to die we're afraid because of the realization we never lived and i actually knew i'd lived fully and and the loss would not be mine it would be my families but i didn't feel fear and i also i don't know i've walked in the middle of drug cartels i i've walked into rooms where uzi machine guns were protecting every door and cocaine up the ceilings and and i never felt fear and it and i think some of it is i've never been afraid to die i've been afraid to not live each day fully so three weeks later when i'm going to surgery i still hadn't felt fear and i didn't feel angry and i realized i wasn't angry because why not me see i didn't have the sense of entitlement like other people suffer horribly other people have experienced such pain and such tragedy how in the world could i ever be a voice to other people if i was unwilling to go through pain and suffering and tragedy and so my only like sense of i'd like to live is life that lived through this so i can help other people through this and when i got ready for the surgery they they explained to me they found more more cancer than they thought i had designed some papers and i said goodbye to my family and everything inside of me said you need to say goodbye for the last time and what was odd and i i was writing a book called the last arrow and i when they told me i had cancer i went home that night when my family went to bed i sat down and thought i have to finish this book so i was in the last edit of my book and i opened up to the page i was on and the first sentence i read was this i need to tell you before you hear from someone else i'm dying i wrote that sentence a year before when i didn't know i had cancer that's the first sentence i read the night i found out i had cancer but the next lion's line that really matters the next line after i need to tell you before you hear from someone else that i'm dying is but so are you and i've lived this strange sense every day of my life that i was dying and then i need to live today as if it was the last day here's a crazy thing in between being told i had cancer and the surgery three weeks later we had this really nice hybrid family suv and i wanted to give it to this couple and my wife's so generous she always wants to so i went and got it fixed i had it detailed made it look brand new driving it back from getting detailed detailed the family is waiting at our house for the car i'm three blocks in the house a white truck speeds through a stop sign hits me head-on totals the suv totals that car they run for their lives and so it's a hit and run and i'm feet away and i think to myself i'm not even going to have time to die for cancer i'm going to die you know somebody running a red light killing me and and the reality is that we don't know when we're going to die we don't even know how we're going to die and but if we live with this sense of an expiration date i think we'll live each day more fully so yes i had cancer oh and then and and for me the most fun part of the story is coming out of it because you know six and a half hours of surgery and uh and then i called my doctor i had a i had um what's it called um man i can't even think of the the phrase of that machine that they put into your private parts oh catheter i had a catheter yeah that was worse than cancer and they totally had the catheter for a month so within a week i called him and said get this thing out of me now get it out yeah i said what's the fastest anyone's ever recovered from uh this kind of surgery and said well there's no like world record and so three weeks later i snuck out of my house uh and i rented a basketball court and i called my guys and i was playing basketball three weeks after having six and a half hours of surgery and the holes were bleeding but my my three-pointer was dropping yes i knew the guy was with me the thing that we have not been able to cover today that i just want to say is this because people that know us both you're a psycho competitive person we're that's another conversation for another day yeah with this sweet kind brilliant pastor will also just cut your whatever he has to cut off to beat you in any sport that he's playing as long as it's legal so i got to say one thing because i knew the i knew that part of you because we've shared this privately with one another that you've always had this sense that you're dying this this sense about you and i just want our audience to know that that is one thing that you and i share very much in common ever since i was a little boy mike and i were talking about before you arrived here today mike everybody knows is my videographer's done every one of our shows and i was sharing that with mike that since i was a very little boy i've been very conscious about my death and and that not in the fact that i'm trying to speed it up or that i'm manifesting it just in the fact that i do have an expiration date and i i i think it's a beautiful thing to contemplate death one of the great gifts of my faith is that when you're contemplating faith you're also contemplating the physical death of your body and that hyper awareness of that has caused me to be in a little bit bigger hurry and to enjoy and to have perspective and to take time to notice important things in my life because i'm i'm a flawed human being i'm a person i'm a man right and so this notion that i'm not going to be here forever causes me to want to be better causes me to want to do things sooner causes me to enjoy things that maybe i otherwise wouldn't have perspective on and so of death allows you to experience the eternal value of temporary things i think you're right i think you're very good because you can live so fully present president and it's something that most high achievers struggle with as presents as being in the present moment i've struggled with that too but it does give me that gift you're 100 percent right i i want to ask you one more question this is such a remarkable conversation today it's amazing because forever people were trying to get you and i together and then once you've had a contrast from the one you had last week it is different from the one that i had last week that's for sure is it um john john edward john edwards correct i'm just going to go public and say that you asked me it was you and uh if you should have them and i said absolutely you did say absolutely you know why things drive so crazy about christians being afraid to have conversations with people that you disagree with or are different than or don't understand i don't understand yeah and i just i i i love the fact that you were you had the courage to do that thank you and so i just want to i want to go publicly i wanted you to be public because i didn't say who it was but it was you and that ought to give you all an idea of how much admiration and respect i've grown to have for you that i wanted to be okay with you it was not only okay i i applauded it i thought i took great courage to do that thank you brother and i enjoyed it very much so speaking of courage last question for this show because i know there's going to be a bunch more i want to talk about the last thing is that i'm someone who i didn't come to the show today thinking i wanted to think about faith or god or anything like that but now i am a little bit two things in there one what do you what would you say is what does god want to be in my life and what would be a first step maybe i could take if this is something that you know what that phantom pain has been awoken in me and i'd like to find more answers to it well that's a that's very both deeply spiritual and deeply personal question you know because a lot of times when you start talking to people about how to connect to god it can make them very very nervous you know and i think i would start by saying this no one can drag you to god kicking and screaming you know it's it's and i think that's been the mistake of not just religion but even christianity of trying to um force people into a relationship with god i always told people i said look have you ever been around someone that you liked for a while but then you really didn't like them anymore you know i mean that that's kind of like that's that's torment the idea that you don't want to know god or don't want to be in god's presence is i think a misunderstanding of god because if i ask you the question differently if i said ed would you would you would you want to live forever in an environment where you were unconditionally loved you go yeah you know or if i said ed would you want to live in a situation where you would always know your value you know would you want to live for eternity where you lived free of fear and all the boundaries of your limitation were erased and now you could be fully you would you want to experience that see i i think the problem is that god's name has been connected to all the wrong characteristics and i i tell people look when i use the word god i'm describing my search for god when it's it's like me looking for god when i use the name jesus i'm describing god search for me and so for a long time i could only use the word god because it's senses i could only see the back of god's head but when god turned around i realized oh it's jesus it's what i'd say to a person who's kind of open i said the first thing is just to be open to the possibility that god is for you and that um that god is not warring against you that god is actually fighting for you and that if you've run away from religion you haven't run away from god you're actually running to god if you run away from hypocrisy and the falsehood of religion you haven't run away from god you're actually running to god because god isn't there god is in the other end of that and when you're running toward love when you're running toward compassion when you're running toward meaning when you're running toward hope you're actually running toward god you just may not know what and so what i would say is that you know there's a there's a universe of words that you need to begin to identify with god words like love and hope words like compassion and mercy words like beauty and wonder this reporter who was a journalist from i think new york times or something came to la and she's an atheist and she said what does it feel like to believe in god i thought what a great question you know i told her said have you ever been so in love that like food just tastes better and colors are brighter and aromas are richer and i said when you're in that kind of love you just you just can't wait to get up and you can't wait to you know to get with them because all you can do is think about them i said that's what it's like to to come to know god that's what it's like to come to know jesus that's what it's like to finally find an authentic faith all sudden like the aromas are richer the colors are brighter and and you just you you just feel that your senses are heightened because you're so fully alive and so first things you just got to believe that god's for you and that uh that god can outrun you because um when you're running away from god you're running from love and you know what the when you know insanity is to search for love and run from god and so i i talk about like a line of faith because for me i didn't get all the answers when i trusted jesus with my life um i wasn't even sure if if it was real to be honest with you you know i i just basically said god if you're out there i'm in and jesus if you're real like i'm i'm here and so i just prayed a simple prayer so you know mosaic i don't go through a long elaborate thing i just say here's the prayer jesus i give you my life and i said all there's going to be so many conversations after that i said just imagine this line of faith where it takes incredible courage to say god i'm going to trust you to reveal yourself to me to make yourself known uh to meet me where i am and to love me in all of my brokenness and yes things like forgiveness are important you know not not because god needs to forgive us but because we need forgiveness you know because forgiveness frees us from guilt and shame like forgiveness feels us it frees us from the condemnation of the past so you know the reason jesus wants to forgive us is because he doesn't want to leave us trapped in our past you know it's not that god is up in the heaven being this judge going you need my forgiveness or i'm going to judge you no god is saying no you need my forgiveness so i can free you and so see forgiveness and your need for it is god's way of freeing you to your future and then realize that god has stepped into human history for you that he's taken on flesh and blood for you that what it looks like when god becomes visible is jesus you know if you want a kind of a metaphysical like added to this um we now know that mass and energy are the same that sounds like superstition not that long ago that would have seen like mythology not science but now we know math math matter and energy are the same we know this table and the light are made of the same material which is crazy right so if god is light and he's moving so fast we can't see him when god slows down to take on material that's jesus so jesus is god slowing down into time and space to walk among us so we can see him because you know if you're in a car going 120 miles an hour and you're looking at the trees they look like a blur but when the other cars go 120 miles an hour and now you're going 120 miles an hour you can make eye to eye contact so god who is light slowed down so that we could see him face to face so that now we could live in that light and uh and and not be trapped in all the brokenness and all the regret of the past and so what jesus does for me is he sets me free to be who he created me to be i just tell people look it's all about trust you don't have to have all the information about god you got married you did not have all the information on your wife and she did not have all the information about you when a person says i need to understand everything you go that's not really true because you don't understand everything about anything that's right what you need to decide is who can be trusted and this guy told me the other day we need to accept that we're gods and that i'm a god and your god and our ultimate job is to love ourselves unconditionally and i looked at him and i said how's that going i know the one thing you can never do is love yourself unconditionally here's the crazy thing we're not capable of loving ourselves unconditionally and i looked and said that's why you need jesus he's the only one who can love you unconditionally even though you're not deserving of it and so if you're listening i would say you are worthy of absolute unconditional love because god created you that way and what god stepped into human history through jesus to do was to create a way for you and him to reconnect and that god's goal for you is not perfection it's intimacy and you know you and i we we finally relinquished the goal of perfection that's right you know uh but i don't ever want to relinquish the hope of intimacy and and that's what i would just challenge people to do it's all about relationship it's all about trust just take a moment cross the line of faith and and if you're there just say jesus i give you my life and watch how god will meet you where you are and your life will change amen i cannot believe i believe ed i i i i can't believe you believe i get up on sundays that mosaic i go you understand like i have this skeptical cynical mind that i just can't believe i believe but what can i do when when aaron was around 11 we were driving in the car and he said dad i don't know if i'd be a christian if i didn't grow up in a christian home i said why is that he goes i have so many doubts and questions i said oh without some questions we all have those and i was a little nervous you know what's going on and so what are you going to do he said well you know i've met god so i don't know what i can do and that's the way i still feel that it's like i have so many questions and so many doubts and so many uncertainties and there's so much mystery and doesn't it make life better yes yes yes but i've had this unexplainable encounter with the creator of the universe and i've come to know his name as jesus and that's as real to me as us sitting here together today and um and that has been what has given me meaning and wholeness and hope and and that's what i hope for everyone so do i and by the way as i said earlier confidence it's given me confidence in my life too in addition to the things that it's given you and i'm so grateful for you because your vulnerability and your authenticity gives people like me i wish i had met you so much so many years ago but i think we met at the right time but that i don't have all the answers and i do have doubts and i do have questions from time to time doubts about why god doesn't handle certain things or why is someone suffering or why is this pain but i've met him and i don't doubt that he exists and that's the beautiful part and i'm so grateful for you today was uh today was very very special for me and i know it was for millions of people and i want you guys all following irwin i want you getting his books i want you getting the one that's coming out if you want some beautiful clothes on your back and you want to look really awesome take a look into that too and share this show there are people you know and that you love who need to hear or see what went on here today and you know it and so it ain't that difficult to say share or watch this or give it a shot so thank you erwin god bless you all max out hey guys thanks for sticking around if you'd like more click the videos right here they're exactly what you need to see next and if you're new here hit subscribe and become a part of the max out community and tell me what you think about the videos in the comments below i read all of them every week and i select winners that get all kinds of prizes gear coaching calls with me make a comment

Channel: Ed Mylett

Views: 77,797

Rating: 4.8359332 out of 5

Keywords: ed mylett, mylett, Erwin McManus, finding god in your future, mosaic church, is god for me, if god is for me, what is gods message for me today, relationship vs religion, religion vs relationship, religion vs relationship with god, relationship vs religion got questions, erwin mcmanus interview, erwin mcmanus mosaic, church, erwin raphael mcmanus, los angeles church, mosaic msc, ed mylett motivation, ed mylett interview

Id: DZ7Gvs7D-qg

Length: 68min 49sec (4129 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021